Whatever Happened To...

George Hill has exactly two existing screen credits at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio. One’s on Mouse Menace, released in late 1946. It was the second cartoon put into production by the new Art Davis unit. The first (The Goofy Gophers) and third (The Foxy Duckling) have no writer credit. Dave Monahan is credited with the story in the unit’s next four cartoons, then Hill returns for a final time with The Pest That Came To Dinner, released in 1948. That’s it. By the time it was in theatres, Hill had been fired months earlier.

Hill just vanishes if you go by movie trade papers or credits on cartoons. Yet he was still around. Just not in Hollywood.

We’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s paste together some background on George Rogers Hill.

Hill was born in Long Branch, New Jersey on March 11, 1905 to George B. and Josephine (Rogers) Hill. His father disappears from the picture fairly quickly—he was apparently a horse trainer who died in a police jail in New York City in 1912—and young George was raised by his mother at her widowed mother’s home.

Hill got a job reporting for the local paper; his first wife was employed there as the social columnist until her death in 1937. His byline appears until 1935. In September that year, he was the subject of a story when he got mugged in New York City (he is referred to as a “Long Branch artist”). Presumably he was working for the Fleischer studio, judging by the time-line about him in a 1939 article stating he had worked on Gulliver’s Travels and had been with Fleischers for about four years.

In October 1940, we find Hill and his second wife Sally in Alhambra, California. He is unemployed. The next year, he copyrighted a song called “We’ll Guard America For You” (it was apparently unpublished).

We’ll skip past his Warner years to 1952, where a photo caption in the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey shows he is now employed at the Evans Signal Laboratories, and has won a second consecutive award from the Freedom Foundation “for outstanding contribution to the cause of freedom” for a film strip he had made. He was in the right-wing propaganda business, much like John Sutherland Productions on the west coast.

He won again the following year, and the August 23, 1953 edition of the Press had another photo and the following article:

Freedom Foundation Award Winner Began Cartoon Career on Wallpaper
LONG RABNCH [sic] —George R. Hill, artist-cartoonist who last month accepted his third Freedom Foundation award in as many years, has no idea of starting work on next year's entry—until next year.
A great believer in "deadline pressure," the illustrator who has worked on some of the movie cartoon world's most famous characters turned out this year's prize-winner in less than a week.
Mr. Hill, born here, lives at the old family home, 201 Union Avenue, but he has seen plenty of the country since getting his first cartooning job with the famed Bill Nolan, the Kraxy Kat [sic] creator, here, in 1923.
Drew Famous Characters
He has worked for Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal Pictures on such well-known figures as Pop-eye, Little Lulu, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop, Elmer Fud [sic], and Porky Pig.
This year's Freedom Foundation prize-winner was a cartoon character named Elmer, a smarter-than- average Kansas mule who was lend-leased behind the Iron Curtain. In a series of sketches the hard-headed mule gives his impression of life behind the curtain, compared with American life. Mr. Hill, 48, claims that altho movies may not be better than ever—as the ads claim—they are well on their way. Some companies are even giving the three-dimensional fever second place to the search for better stories, he claims.
When he first began, he recalls, the story was unimportant. People were so fascinated by animated cartoons that no story was needed to draw crowds.
TV Using Cartooning Skills
Television is taking advantage of animated cartooning skills, he notes. It is taking many top illustrators from Hollywood. It is also taking the old story-less cartoons—like the Farmer Gray series.

Mr. Hill's career began at home—on the family wallpaper. His mother, an amateur landscape painter, discouraged artwork on the living room wall, but she led young George into the field of art.
After Chattle High school and a few years or art instruction in New York, he was drawing Popeye and Betty Boop for Max Fleischer. Then came "Gulliver s Travels." Then came unemployment, when the Fleischer enterprise folded.
Heads for Hollywood
He took his new bride to the West Coast and began with Warner Bros. For three days he sat and watched Warner cartoons in a company studio. He liked it and went to work.
Then came Paramount and Universal Pictures.
Warner's Bugs Bunny is still his favorite, however, "because his personality is a wonderful thing and he is so unpredictable."
Moviegoers can blame Mr. Hill for many of the Hollywood Cartoon plots, he admits. He was a story and a layout man. A "story" in Hollywoodese is a series of sketches by the cartoonist illustrating the action of the proposed film.
Many feature movies are laid out similarly by illustrators. Television is relying on the method exclusively, he notes.
Now working in the art section of the photographic division at Evans Signal Laboratory, Wall Township, Mr. Hill can't explain where he got most of the ideas that excited the kiddies.
It's Labor
"The work is labor," he says. "You either dream up a story or you don't get paid. That's a pretty convincing argument, so you dream up a story.” His first Freedom Foundation prize came in collaboration with Miss Anne Stommel, Rumson Road, Little Silver. His second had a clever old owl as its subject, and Elmer was featured in the most recent one.
He thanks Maj. Gen. Kirke B. Lawton, commanding officer at Fort Monmouth, for helping to make the owl famous. General Lawton sent a photostat of the sketches to Washington. They are being used in booklet and film form to illustrate Army educational material.
Works on New Character
Altho he isn't worrying about next year's Freedom Foundation entry, he is card at work on Chico, a character of his own invention. Chico is not an animal—he is a Mexican lad—but he'll have plenty of animal friends, says Mr. Hill.
Cartoonists thrive on animals, he observed. He ended up with Elmer, a mule. But so did his famous and early employer, Bill Nolan. Mr. Nolan has been occupying his time recently making Hollywood's Francis a "talking mule."

Hill was never credited on any cartoons Walter Lantz made for Universal.

He continued to pile up awards, as we see from the Daily Record of February 22, 1954.

George Hill Wins Fourth Freedom Award For Serious Titled ‘Cub Reporter’
An artist illustrator at Ft. Monmouth who previously drew such popular movie cartoons as Bugs Bunny, Popeye and Porky Pig, receives today his fourth award from the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge, Pa. The only four-time winner known, George R. Hill of 201 Union Ave., Long Branch, is being awarded second prize in the general category for his "story" board series of a "Cub Reporter's Story"
Just as all four of his awards have been second place in the toughest category, which includes thousands of entries on movies, TV shows, editorial cartoons, radio program, and many others, all of Hill's cartoon stories concern animals.
In his ’53 prize winning effort for the Freedom Foundation, which addresses the American Way of Life, the cub is a reporter covering the happenings in his town to other animal “citizens.”
The series of some 30 cartoon depicts how the big bear pays a visit and, as a stranger, immediately becomes a menace in telling them how to run the town better.
As a political tycoon, the bear put the pressure on the town citizens and eventually deprives them of voting rights, personal properties and civic benefits. He makes the town a “one-bear" dictatorship.
The cartoon story concludes as a warning, "Don’t let this happen here", or guard our privileges in the American way of life.
In last year's prize winner, Hill's animation of "Elmer's Story" depicted a Kansas mule lend-leased behind the Iron Curtain giving impressions behind the curtain as compared to American life.
Hill's entry in 1951 to the Freedom Foundation was a "Bird's Eye View", a migrating owl comparing conditions around the rest of the world as to those in America.
The commanding general at Ft. Monmouth, Maj Gen. K. B. Lawton, impressed by the subject, had photostats of the cartoon forwarded to Army headquarters. As a result, Troop Information and Education are now using this series in booklet and film form to illustrate Army educational material.
The year before, he split a $1,000 award with another Ft. Monmouth worker. Hill's drawings were titled, "What's in it for Me", showing the benefits of an average worker in this country. His partner wrote the story.
[Prior to this career, Hill] was drawing cartoons for Max Fleischer in New York on Betty Boop and Popeye. Later with Warner Brothers on the West Coast, he did cartoon stories on Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, among others.
At Ft. Monmouth, Hill works in the school text section of the Signal School drawing schematic diagram and other training aids and material for the student.

Now, let’s back up to his Warners career, or what little we know about it.

The Warner Club News of March 1945 reveals Hill arrived from New York to team with Warren Foster and write for Bob McKimson. The June 1945 issue stated Hill and Hubie Karp would be doing stories for Art Davis, who had taken over the Bob Clampett unit, starting with Bacall to Arms (which also has no screen credit for story); Davis denied doing much work on that cartoon.

Writer Lloyd Turner revealed in a fine interview with historian Mike Barrier about why Hill’s career at the studio crashed and burned. Hill had worked with Foster and Mike Maltese at Fleischer’s, but he wasn’t getting along with director Davis in Turner’s remembrance.

He was pretty good on the sauce, too, and he would sneak out and go across the street to a little bar called the Ski Room. I don't remember the name of that street; it was the back gate, where you drove in and drove out, with the guard there. It was Van Ness, and then the next street over, like Fountain. Right across the street, at Fountain and Sunset, there was a little bar; it was there for years. Anyway, George would sneak over there and have drinks. He was so frustrated, because Artie wouldn't buy anything, no matter what he put up on the board, Artie would come in and say, "I don't know...I don't think this is working." So George would take it down and try something else. Nothing he did seemed to work. Selzer was suspicious; he'd go in to see George, and he was in the tank. He knew he was getting it somewhere, and he was laying for him.
One day, George had a session with Artie, and Artie stripped him of his pride, or whatever. George went out the back door and across the lot, and out, past the guard. Everybody liked George, except Selzer; nice guy, there wasn't anything not to like there. He was not a predator like Ted. So he went over and he got all tanked up. He's staggering back onto the lot, and he gets right at the gate, and here comes Eddie Selzer, in his chauffeur-driven car, coming in. George is standing there talking to the guard, blasted out of his head. The guard grabs George and shoves him down in his guard shack and says, "Stay there." Pushes him down below that little counter. Eddie drives up, and for some reason stops and talks to the guard for a minute. George gets up, and [thumbs his nose and gives Selzer the razzberry]. So, when he gets back, of course, "George Hill, office." He was let go, instantly. It was a great relief. I talked to him afterwards, talked to his wife, and she said, "We've got to get back to New York. He hasn't been happy since we've been out here." So they left, and I never heard any more about him.

Lloyd Turner isn’t around to read this story and thus hear any more about him. Hill isn’t around, either. On October 3, 1962 he fell on the street and suffered a brain haemorrhage. Someone found him on the pavement but it was too late. Hill was only 57.

Note: Harry McCracken has been of great help assembling this biography.

Birthday Benny

126 years ago, the world gained a 39-year-old.

Jack Benny was born.

It’s safe to hypothesize that he was one of the most popular comedy figures of the 20th Century. Setting aside his vaudeville career in the 1920s, he was in the public eye almost weekly for 33 years on radio and television, and continued with occasional specials and guest appearances until his death nine years after his regular series ended. On top of that, he was so much of a drawing power he generated immense amounts of money for symphony orchestras, concert halls and musicians funds.

The fictionalised version of Benny beamed into living rooms had enough quirks and tics that the audience could easily identify with him. And laugh at him, too.

In honour of his birthday, here’s a column in the editorial pages of the Napa Valley Register of February 14, 1968, though I have not ascertained when it was originally written.

(EDITORS NOTE: Jack Benny, soon to appear at the Circle Star Theatre and a frequent star at Lake Tahoe, has been a leading entertainer for many years. The following report on Benny was originally written by Ross P. Game several years ago for some Chicago area newspapers and is reprinted today Benny's birthday—as a matter of public interest.)
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby have been top-ranking entertainers for a good many years. And yet, how many Americans are aware that Crosby was born in Tacoma, Wash., or that Hope is a native of England?
Such is not the case of Jack Benny. Waukegan, Ill., has countless industries, leading schools, recreation and vacation spots and miles of Lake Michigan shore line, but for most Americans these matters are of only secondary importance, for Waukegan is Jack Benny's hometown.
It's even likely that if Congress should ever move the nations capital to Waukegan the community would continue to carry the Jack Benny association in the hearts and minds of most people.
Jack Benny has been a Waukegan boy who made good, and in doing so never forgot the people, the places or things that played so important a part in his earlier life.
Waukegan today is filled with the Jack Benny legend. Anyone visiting the city for the first time will ask many questions about the comedian. Where did he live? Where did he go to school? Does he still have many friends in Waukegan? And, an almost certain question to be asked by a stranger: Did you know Jack Benny?
The entertainer hasn't forgotten Waukegan and there are a good many residents of the area who were raised with the comedian, went to school with him, were his neighbors, served with him in the Navy or appeared with him on the stage. Many of those concerned still keep in contact with Benny and the others enjoy recalling those days with the youthful, promising violinist.
The now famed comedian was born Benny Kubelsky on Valentine Day, Feb. 14, 1894 (although he has remained 39 for a good many years). His mother was taken from Waukegan to a Chicago hospital for the very special occasion. His father owned a clothing store on Waukegan's South Genesee Street and was able to support the family in a moderate style.
While still in grade school young Benny got a part time job as an usher at Waukegans Barri-son Theater and a short time later was the only knicker-bockered member of the pit orchestra, playing the violin—or what his friends termed "his fiddle."
Grover C. Lutter, a former police officer, recalls when he had the Genesee beat. "I can remember seeing Benny walking along carrying that big violin case," he notes. "The fiddle was almost as big as the boy." Lutter became acquainted with the young musician and later continued the friendship after the youth went on to be so famous.
When Benny was 15 or 16 he and Cora Salisbury, pianist at the Barrison, teamed up as vaudeville duo. Earlier, as Miss Florence Grady of Waukegan, recalls, the teenager had won weekly amateur contests and was popular with fellow students at Waukegan High School. The team of Kubelsky and Salisbury became featured on theater bills within 200-300 miles of Waukegan, but when Miss Salisbury's father became ill she returned home. Benny then teamed with a Chicago pianist named Lyman Woods. They gained bookings as far west as Seattle and even were scheduled to appear in London's Palladium.
Although he was "on the road" much of the time, reports David Richmon, a cousin, Benny would come home to visit his father in Waukegan and later nearby Lake Forest whenever he was in the area and during holidays.

Just prior to World War I Benny entered the Navy and was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, only a few miles from his Waukegan home. One night, as the story is told, Benny was to appear in a fundraising event at Great Lakes. As he walked on the stage with his violin the lights went out. However, the concert continued—with side comments from the musician. The remarks brought laughs and applause from the audience. That is credited with being the start of Benny, the comedian. His later activities during the war were as a sailor in grease paint.
Cliff Gordon, another cousin in Waukegan, comments with a smile, "He (Benny) was probably the outstanding military man in World War I." Gordon notes that Benny had been a hopeful musician, but his Great Lakes performance changed his entire career with the switch from music to comedy.
Originally the performer adopted the professional name of Ben K. Benny. After World War I he was known as Ben Benny, but that sounded too much like Ben Bernie, then popular orchestra leader. He changed his name this time to Jack Benny.
Following the war Benny was booked as a comedian and master of ceremonies. He gained fame on Broadway and also appeared in Earl Carroll and Schubert musicals.
In 1927 Jack and Sadye Marks (later Mary Livingston) became husband and wife in Waukegan. He had been in Los Angeles the previous year with the musical, Great Temptations, and it was there he was introduced to the young woman who clerked in a Los Angeles department store.
Several years later they adopted a daughter, Joan.
In the coming years Jack was making movies. Among those in which he appeared was The Hollywood Party of 1929. In the early 1930s he became interested in radio. He forfeited a guaranteed $1,500 a week salary in an Earl Carroll contract so as to give the new entertainment medium a whirl.
Ed Sullivan, then host of a radio series, had Benny his guest during the early months of 1932. He made a hit and was offered his own contract. Since then Jack Benny has been on radio every season, first on NBC and later CBS, finally returning to NBC. His chief sponsors have been Canada Dry, General Motors, General Tires, General Foods and American Tobacco Co. The comedian developed his own radio show menu in the early days and before long others were imitating his style.
Benny is credited with being the first person to good-naturedly kid the commercials of his sponsor. He is also the first comedian to play straight man for other people on a show.
Jack Benny has been portrayed on his radio, television and stage presentations as the cheapest man in the world.
It's said that the comedian has worn out many coins and paper bills in his underground vault while counting his financial reserve. The cheap tag has been applied to Benny for entertainment purposes only. Those who know him consider the comedian to be one of the most generous individuals in the entertainment world.
Jerome Morrison, Waukegan businessman and friend of the comedian, terms Benny to be quite thoughtful and interested in the development of Waukegan, adding, Jack Benny is a nice guy for the town, not only publicly but quietly too.
The comedian has taken part in all major Waukegan fund-raising campaigns for charity and has gone all out to assist worthy: programs in his hometown.
On one occasion he performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. As a result of that benefit, Cedars of Lebanon Hospital netted a reported $100,000. There have been numerous other performances too, with the Waukeganite giving his all.
One of Jack Benny's friends comments, "Few people will ever know the real Benny for what he is, because he's attempting to be funny when performing—and succeeds. In real life hes a warm, human type person and seems to love the world and that world loves him."
In Hollywood those persons working in restaurants, cabs and other places where Jack Benny may have occasion to appear term the comedian exceedingly generous with tips.
During World War II and the Korean War and later he traveled thousands of miles to entertain American servicemen and often appeared close to the fighting-lines. Jack and Mary provided one of Hollywood's most lavish weddings when their daughter was married in March of 1954. Total bill for the affair was estimated as being in the neighborhood of $25,000.
Benny has never forgotten Waukegan and the millions of Americans who listen to radio or view television will never forget the association. "They loved me in Waukegan" is frequently noted by the comedian during the course of a show.

That Waukegan will never forget Jack Benny there can be no doubt. In April of 1937 there was a Jack Benny Day conducted, with the city's most famed citizen returning to accept the cheers of his home folks.
Two years later another big Benny day was experienced in Waukegan. Then the spotlight fell upon the community for the world premiere of "Man About Town." The stars were Dorothy Lamour, Edward Arnold and Jack Benny. They were all on hand for a huge parade and a round of special activities.
Throughout the festivities one of the busiest men in Waukegan was Julius Sinykin, long time friend of Benny, who played a featured part in the affair.
Jack Benny remains on top in the entertainment world, where figures have come and gone with the changing tides of popularity.
Benny has been associated with all of Hollywood's top film studios and has been featured in numerous films.
Jack and Mary live in a fine residential section of Beverly Hills, Calif. He still practices the violin.
Waukeganites feel that Benny has changed little through the years. Most consider him "one of us," and believe that he's still the same friendly, well rounded individual.
In 1911 The Waukegan Daily Sun commented on an Elks Club ministrel show act, saying, "Benny Kubelsky, the ragtime violinist and the first act in the folio, showed himself a master of the violin and his pleasing slyly humorous personality made a deep impression." Jack Benny continues to make that impression wherever he goes—and in whatever he does.

My, What Big Teeth We Have!

“Illusion of life?” Not in the early Disney cartoon Cannibal Capers. The cannibals, in some scenes, have rubber sticks for arms and legs. There are some scenes where the cannibals look more like ducks.



The lion chomps down on the cannibal he’s chasing and loses its teeth. The cannibal then picks up the teeth and chases the lion with them, ripping off the animal’s fur and revealing long underwear.



No names besides Walt Disney’s appear in this 1930 Columbia release.

Dody

In a number of ways, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” was an odd, disconcerting show. Everyone was just too dysfunctional for my tastes but I admit that sometimes that worked pretty well.

The actors were well cast and one of my favourites was Mary’s mother, played by Dody Goodman. I didn’t know anything about her (or most of the cast) at the time. It was years later I discovered this was kind of a second TV career for her, that she was one of many offbeat regular guests that populated the Jack Paar version of the Tonight show.

Dody Goodman kind of reminded me of the late Marion Lorne, except Miss Lorne always seemed to be fighting for the right words. Dody just ploughed right through, whether or not the words were right.

Here’s a Bell Syndicate piece soon after she joined Tonight. Paar had been handed the show in July 1957 after a disastrous attempt to make it one of those golly-gosh-look-what’s-happening-in-this-city programmes beloved by NBC president Pat Weaver (though Weaver was gone when it debuted). The story is from September 22nd.

‘Tonight,’ Dody Goodman May Be Hit of TV Season
By MARGARET McMANUS
NEW YORK, N.Y.— As soothsayers go, I'm not much of one. I can never guess whether it's going to rain tomorrow, or which pony will win by a nose, or even whether it will be a big season for the "little black dress."
It follows rather logically that nobody should get very excited about a vote of confidence from me, but for whatever it's worth, I'm hustling out on a limb with a prediction. There's a girl on television, a comedienne yet —which makes her the worst risk of all— who I think may be the hit of this television year. She's Dody Goodman, comparatively unknown, a former ballet dancer, now a regular member of Jack Paar's "Tonight" show, 11:15 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily, Mondays through Fridays, on NBC.
It's hard to describe Miss Goodman. She doesn't really do anything and frequently she doesn't say much. Obviously, this will be in her favor. Perhaps it would be easier to say what she doesn't do. She does not chatter. She does not make faces. She does not move wildly about the stage with frenetic gestures. She doesn't tell jokes as such.
DODY COMMENTS
She sits quietly in a demure, ladylike way, wearing a demure, ladylike skirt and blouse and she comments. Her voice is a Midwestern voice, high, with a nasal twang and her face is usually deadpan.
It is entirely possible that you may tune in the "Tonight" show to see this girl and wait impatiently for her to say something to make you roll right on your cnair. She won't, and you won't. It's not that kind of humor.
However, it won't make her nervous in the least that you are sitting there, waiting for her to be funny. On the surface, she is utterly composed and her trump card is that she does not panic and try too hard.
When I first saw her, Jack Paar, the star of "Tonight," was introducing her in the most extravagant of terms, and I thought, "what a terrible thing to do to a performer. How can anyone live up to a build-up like that?"
There's just one small difference. Dody isn't "anyone."
"It doesn't bother me when Jack says things like that," she said, with a wonderful vagueness. "He always says what he thinks, and I think it's nice he thinks that way. I don't try to be funny. I don't try to think of something clever to say, or it would come out chaos. I sit there, and if something comes to my mind, and nobody else is talking, I say it.
JUST BEING MYSELF

"You see, I don't have any technique. I'm just being myself. Only thing I have to do is find out who myself is."
At lunch here on this muggy, Indian summer day in Manhattan, Dody Goodman wore a yellow shantung dress, with the black string tie at the neck, and pink sandals. She is thirtyish, with short blonde hair and brown eyes. She is the essence of simplicity.
Whether from shyness, or an unusual natural reticence, it is hard to say, but even in an interview, she talks almost not at all. She is pleasant, perfectly agreeable, but at the end of an hour, one has only the merest impression as to who Dody Goodman is, what she means by what she says. This could be the reason why her five-paragraph biography in the NBC press department is the shortest on record.
She was born in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dexter Y. Goodman, who still make their home there. She has one sister, Mrs. Rose Adams, who lives in Columbus, and a brother, Dexter Goodman Jr., who lives in Randolph, N.Y.
She studied dramatics at Northwestern University and ballet at the American Ballet School and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School and she came to New York to be a ballet dancer. As a dancer, she appeared in "Call Me Madame," "Miss Liberty," and "High Button Shoes."
FRIENDS PERSUADED HER
It was her friends who thought "Dody was just a scream," who persuaded her to become a comedienne and as such, she appeared in one of Leonard Stillman's productions of "New Faces." Dick Linkrom, the executive producer of "Tonight" had seen her work in this show, and in a New York night club asked her to come over to NBC to talk with Jack Paar. After a 20-minute interview, Paar hired her.
She is now under exclusive contract to NBC, and it could well be that the timing for her kind of comedy is perfect for television at this moment. This seems not to be the moment for the planned joke, but rather for the witty remark, for the zany comment which makes sense in a perverse kind of way.
For example, here are a couple of typical Dody Goodman remarks, during lunch:
"I don't watch much television unless somebody comes in to visit me and just sits around and talks. Then I turn it on. But if I'm by myself, I have too much to do."
"I just have a one-room apartment now, but I'm going to look for a bigger place. I only have one closet. I can hardly turn around."
"I'm beginning to feel like a real celebrity. People stop me on the street and ask for my autograph. I think they recognize my voice."
HAS GRACIE ALLEN QUALITY
There's a Gracie Allen quality to Dody Goodman, but her humor is not as contrived. There is also something of the quality of Judy Holliday's Billie Dawn, of "Born Yesterday," wide-eyed but wise. However, Dody Goodman is completely subdued, without brass.
Actually, you can't put a name on her humor. You can't even analyze it. The best thing you can do is to see it for yourself, but don't expect too much, too soon. It's much like olives. You may have to cultivate the taste.
As to whether or not she has always been exactly this way, she says, "I don't think so, but then sometimes, I wonder."
That is really the key word, "wonder." There's a delicious kind of wonderment about Dody Goodman. You wonder, who she is, and if she is, and why? And all the time, she's wondering too.

When TV rediscovered her, so did columnists. Here’s one from the Yonkers Herald Statesman of July 13, 1976 about her renewed fame from Mary Hartman.

Yes! It's Dody Goodman, Dody Goodman
By KARIN LIPSON
Every night, her unmistakable voice comes with "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" into millions of American homes.
It's Dody Goodman, Dody Goodman, and she's coming to Yonkers on July 26, to appear at the Westchester Playhouse. Miss Goodman will be co-starring with James Coco through the 31st in "George Washington Slept Here," a venerable Moss Hart-George S. Kaufman comedy.
"I play a wife who goes out and buys a 200-year-old house out of the clear blue sky," explained Miss Goodman in a telephone interview, while rehearsing in Stockbridge, Mass.
The wife gets "ruffled" by all the mishaps that follow, continued the actress, but carries on in spite of it all.
Being "ruffled" is something of a Dody Goodman specialty, one that she carries to a high art as the feather-brained "Martha Shumway" on the "Mary Hartman" series.
AS SHE TELLS it, Miss Goodman more or less fell into the role of Mary's muddled mother.
"Aah — I had just gone out there"— to Hollywood — "to visit some friends," she explained, with those Goodmanesque stops and starts.
"I had been appearing in 'Miss Moffett' with Bette Davis. Then she fell ill and the play folded."
So Dody Goodman went to Hollywood, where she heard about the part on "MHMH," as it's called these days in shorthand.
When she landed the role, says the actress, the character "was quite under-developed. They had no clear concept of the type of person they wanted."
Dody Goodman formed that character into one she describes as "ruffled, with many disturbances in her life. But she manages to keep sort of an even keel."
THE SOAP opera spoof marks the second time that Miss Goodman has been part of television history. In 1957 she became a regular on "The Jack Paar Show," the first of TV's long string of talk shows.
It all started when a Paar writer gave her a call in her home town of Columbus, Ohio.
"I said, 'I don't think I can do it if it's just sitting there talking. I really don't think people will find me that interesting,' " she recalled some 19 years later.
"He said, 'You can do it.' I said 'I can't'. He said 'The salary is $750 a week.' I said 'I'll do it.'"

DODY GOODMAN came to her talk show and acting career by way of training in ballet back home in Columbus. After high school she made the typical show-biz hopeful's trek to New York, where she appeared with such other "unknowns" as Beatrice Arthur (now TV's "Maude") and Chita Rivera (of the hit show "Chicago") in Ben Bagley's "Shoestring Revue." After a number of other off- and on- Broadway appearances as a dancer, she got that call from Jack Paar's writer. Soon after, her face, and voice, were known from coast to coast.
Still, she agrees, nothing ever made her quite as well known as working in "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman."
"It's a big resurgence of my career. It's probably bigger now than ever before. Now a lot of people recognize me. They always ask me about the show — will Mary and her husband get back together."
To which the actress answers with a non-committal but hopeful "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they will."
ONE SEASON of "MHMH" production involves taping 130 episodes in 26 weeks — that's one a day.
The "Mary Hartman" crew is on hiatus until mid-August. Until then, Dody Goodman will be keeping busy, taking "George Washington Slept Here" on the road. "It's a really cute show," she says "It'll keep me right on my toes. And it's wonderful working with Jimmy (Coco) again. He's great to be with."
After the week at the Westchester Playhouse, the show will go to Flint. Mich., and from there to the Ohio cities of Warren and Dayton.
And then Dody Goodman will leave the stage, which she describes as "my first love," for the hot lights of the "Mary Hartman" set.
Does she have any hint for us about future developments at the Hartman household?
"Aah, well, no," replied the Goodman voice.
"I've read a couple of things in magazines about it, but I don't know whether that's where the story will go or not."
To find out, stay tuned, folks, as that familiar voice is heard over the background soap opera music, shouting Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman..."

When Mary Hartman left the air, Goodman stayed busy. Grease fans will remember her in both the original and follow-up movies. She was a semi-regular at the tail-end of The Mary Tyler Moore show and on Diff’rent Strokes. Her unusual voice was made for cartoon work and she was hired for one of the later incarnations of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

She lived until she was 93 and died in 2008 in Englewood, New Jersey, not all that far from Broadway and Paar’s Tonight show studio where her career first took off.

It's Not Done With Mirrors

“It’s all done with mirrors,” scoffs Egghead in the final spot gag of Believe It Or Else (1939). Mr. Horace Buzzsaw is ready to put someone in a box and saw them in half.

Egghead gets called out on his scepticism (a running gag through the cartoon) so to prove he’s right, he gets in the box.



Buzzsaw saws. The box is opened. “I still don’t believe it,” defiantly states Egghead. Of course, we all know how this is going to turn out.



The stage curtain closes and the cartoon ends with Egghead (top) chasing after Egghead (bottom). It’s a shame director Tex Avery didn’t have him do it over the ending credits.



Dave Monahan gets credit for the story and Virgil Ross for animation. Egghead is played by Danny Webb. I don’t know who the narrator is. Carl Stalling scores The Umbrella Man during most of this sequence.

A Mosquito Farewell

A few spot gags highlight Target Snafu, a 1944 cartoon where malaria-carrying mosquitos are treated like soldiers enlisting in the war to carry disease to the enemy.

Here are the mosquitos lining up for induction.



One of the mosquitos shares a final goodbye with his girl-friend. You can follow the gag along to the end.



This cartoon came out of the Friz Freleng unit at Warner Bros.

The Super Barbershop of Television

You’ve no doubt heard horror stories of temper tantrums around the sets and writing rooms of TV comedy/variety shows of the 1950s. This isn’t one of them.

In fact, it’s the exact opposite.

Jack Benny was calm and cool, even though his “Benny character” on camera could be exasperated or annoyed. There are plenty of stories about how stars felt at ease with him (Ronald Colman was one). Here’s a syndicated story that appeared in the Ottawa Citizen of January 23, 1953 showing how Benny, who actually had a reputation in the ‘30s as a worrier, was seemingly unruffled as he put together his TV show and, occasionally, dealt with last-minute emergencies.

"Easy-does-it" approach guide for Jack Benny awes his guest stars
By Don Royal
HOLLYWOOD—It IS possible to produce a top-flight TV production without an accompaniment of ulcer-sparking tensions, screaming, ranting and other temperamental outbursts. That has been proved to a growing group of stellar and diverse personalities which includes Ernie Kovacs, Gary Cooper, Phil Harris, Marilyn Monroe, Mrs. Bob Hope and Marvin (the Millionaire) Miller. About the only thing any of these people have in common is a deep-seated admiration and open-mouthed awe for the way Jack Benny puts a program together.
Each of these personalities, you see, has been Jack's guest on his top-rated CBS Television Network show, "The Jack Benny Program."
"We don't get into a raging fuss about every, little thing," says Jack Benny about his own way of working. "We've all been together long enough to anticipate difficulties and cope when they happen. That's why it looks so easy."
Never, reports the average Benny guest star, has a network broadcast been approached so smoothly and recalled as fondly as the average Jack Benny program.
Fond Recollection

About the same formula for success was followed when Jack went to an hour-long format with his "Comedy Specials."
"Sure, these shows are more work and require more concentration," Jack admits. "But that doesn't mean we're climbing the walls— or over one another—by dress rehearsal time."
The men most responsible for this ease of operation in the Benny organization are the Benny organization: the producer Hilliard Marks, his writers, Sam Perrin, George Balzer, Hal Goldman and Al Gordon, and of course Benny himself.
Bob Hope, who has been Benny's guest before was the latest star to experience the Benny "easy does it" policy, as Jack's guest star on the first Benny Comedy Special.
"I remember the last time, a couple of years ago, that I appeared on Jack's show," Hope recalls. "It was even sort of complicated, with a song-and-dance number and everything.
"So did we have a lot of big and little detail to iron out before air time? Not on your life. It was like walking into one of those super barbershops, where the attendants do everything for you but pay the tips."
Follows Routine
The schedule for a Benny program goes something like this. As soon as a guest star is signed, usually four or five weeks in advance, a script is worked out among the four writers, Benny himself and producer Marks, who once wrote for the show.
About three weeks before the show, a finished script is prepared and sent to the guest star. In about a week, everyone— Benny, his staff, the guest, and any other players in the skits— get together for an informal reading in Benny's Beverly Hills office.
A week later, the Friday before the show, the cast and crew assemble for the first time on the stage in Studio 33 of Television City in Hollywood, where the program will go out on the air two days later.
That Friday session is usually devoted to "walk-through" rehearsals, where the movements are timed to co-ordinate them with the 50-odd punch lines that make up an average Benny half-hour.
Benny's director, Semour Berns [sic], uses this opportunity to inject any bits of comic "business" into the action, as well as timing the various routines, commercials and musical numbers that must be included the next Sunday.
Somewhere off to the side during this is Mahlon Merrich [sic], the Benny musical director, who works with his orchestra on numbers for the show, for the "warm-up" and on arrangements with a singer like Dennis Day.
Saturday is the polishing day. The pace is stepped up slightly, the lines are smoothed into comic sharpness, and the actors' and cameras' movements are finalized.
The first dress rehearsal occurs exactly one hour and a half before the show hits the air. Even then, an air of calm sureness pervades Studio 33. Benny himself appears ready for an afternoon nap rather than a fast-paced comedy program.
If there are any rough edges in the dress rehearsal (and there seldom are), they are worked out between Berns, the director, Marks, the producer, and the writers.
Typifies Approach
Jack comes out to do his "warm-up" before the studio audience about five minutes before "air." One of his regular cracks in this period rather typifies his whole approach to show business. "I don't really have to come out here, you know," he quips. "But I do it just to make myself nervous."
Then, at exactly 4: 30 p.m., PST, he makes his entrance for the show.
As Benny himself says: "There's no sense getting into a snit about things. I remember when Nanette Fabray had to bow out at the last moment because of an injury.
"You know what happened? We got Janis Paige to step in as a last-minute replacement. She took the script home one night and came back the next day ready for work.
"Sure there are ragged spots in the show, but part of this business is learning to make the unexpected look as if it were brilliant."
The Benny approach: never panic, always relax and remain unalterably optimistic.

The Background Behind Scrappy

Want to know who is responsible for the backgrounds in the Scrappy and Krazy Kat cartoons of the mid 1930s? Don’t look at the screen. You won’t find it there.

In a way, it’s a shame that many of the artists who worked on cartoons in that decade got no credit, especially the ones who painted backgrounds. Perhaps it’s just as well. Art Davis once remarked the Charles Mintz cartoons released by Columbia never had accurate credits anyway, a fact echoed at other studios.

However, the answer to our question can be found in the Montana Standard newspaper of Butte on February 8, 1934. It’s a name associated with Walt Disney and Walter Lantz.

Ex-Butte Youth Discloses Secrets of Krazy Kat and His Companions of Screen
How Krazy Kat and that comic strip boy-character, Scrappy, are sent through their capers across a motion picture screen to amuse theater-goers throughout the nation was explained yesterday afternoon by Ray Huffine of Los Angeles, a former Butte youth who made good in the movie capital.
Mr. Huffine, art editor of Butte public high school annual, The Mountaineer, in 1923, now is manager of the background art department of the Charles B. Mintz Cartoon studio, which distributes Krazy Kat and Scrappy cartoons through Columbia Pictures. With his wife, a California young woman enjoying her first visit to the Treasure state, he has been spending a two-week vacation at the ranch borne of his parents, Mr and Mrs. Walter Huffine, near Bozeman. The two will leave by car this morning on their return to Hollywood.
At his room at the Leggat hotel yesterday the young artist exhibited a number of samples of his work, and explained that his position with the studio was similar to that of the director of the scenic department of the average motion picture plant.

“My three assistants and I prepare the setting or background for the cartoons,” he said. “There are from 40 to 50 scenes in a 7-minute, 700-foot cartoon, and it takes about 13 days to complete a set of backgrounds. We put out 13 sets of each cartoons, or about 26 pictures a year.”
Guiding Krazy along his adventurous course is not so simple a task as it appears on the screen, Mr. Huffine pointed out. First, the “continuity and gags” are worked out, and then the music is filled in so that the story may be timed and the characters animated to each musical beat.
After this, “animators,” using thin sheets of paper over a strong light, trace out the characters in the extremes of action, such as at the start, high point and finish of a jump. “In-betweeners” handle the tedious detail of drawing the thousands of intermediate films, of which, as many as 10,000 are necessary in one film.
These characters, in their 10,000 changed position [sic], are then photographed over the appropriate backgrounds prepared by Mr. Huffine and his staff. “In pictures where Scrappy appears to be dashing along past a variety of scenery,” Mr. Huffine said, “the figure actually is remaining in the same spot and the background, in the form of a long roll or panorama, is moving past instead.”

Raymond Walter Huffine was born on October 12, 1905 in Garland, Missouri to Walter R. and Eva (Chezem) Huffine. His father had a farm. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 5 and the family moved to Montana, where his dad worked as a teamster.

After graduation from high school, Ray worked as a clerk in Butte for the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company. The site artask.com says Huffine moved to Los Angeles in 1927 and studied at the Otis Art Institute. The City Directory of 1930 states he worked as a clerk, apparently in a hotel.

When he began work for Mintz remains to be discovered. He was at the studio in 1933 when he got married (in 1959 he married again to Charlotte Darling Adams, who spent years in the animation industry). Meanwhile, Walt Disney needed artists with a feature on the horizon. Huffine was hired. The Great Falls Tribune of March 29, 1938 reveals:

Former Bozeman Youth Painted Some Scenes In "Snow White" Film BOZEMAN, March 28.—(Special). To most threater goers [sic], "Snow White And the Seven Dwarfs," famous animated cartoon, will be just a good movie, but to Bozemanites who once knew a lad named Ray Huffine who attended grade school here, the film will have additional interest. For Huffine, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ray Huffine, painted several of the scenes in the film at his easel in the studios of Walt Disney in Hollywood. Huffine has worked in Hollywood nearly a decade and has been employed in the Disney studios several years. His parents live five miles north of Bozeman on the Springhill road.

Huffine was also a fine arts painter and had a showing of water colours at a gallery in Los Angeles as early as 1935. He was also involved in union activity, but not where you might expect. He was a Steward of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 47, which represented film studio musicians (it appears Huffine played the sax in high school). In 1947, he was appointed the local’s tax collector and fired in 1951 when the candidate he backed for local president lost.

Huffine provided backgrounds for all the early Disney features—Pinocchio, Bambi, Dumbo—up until Lady and the Tramp. Oddly, he doesn’t appear to have been employed on Sleeping Beauty and left the studio before it was released. What he did for the next few years is unknown, but he was hired at the Walter Lantz studio by early 1960. Huffine’s last work there was on a 1968 Woody Woodpecker cartoon called One Horse Town.

By then, Huffine was gone. He died at the comparatively early age of 62 on November 4, 1967.

Farewell to Hornsby Shirtwaist

Success came to Orson Bean because of an intangible—he and three other actors meshed very well on a TV game show.

Bean was not part of the original regular panel on To Tell the Truth, but was on the one that everyone of a certain age thinks of when they remember the show. Maybe the best part of his appearances was when he drew a little figure forming the number of the contestant he picked.

Bean was originally a stand-up comedian named Dallas Burrows. How he became Orson Bean is related in Charlie Rice’s “Punchbowl” column in the June 25, 1961 edition of This Week magazine, one of those weekend newspaper supplements. Also below is a column from the Hearst papers from August 26, 1965 where he talks about his game show career to date.

A few years ago he was interviewed by Kliph Nesteroff and you can read the transcript on this web page.

What became of Hornsby Shirtwaist
Some years ago I had the honor of writing comedy material for The Great Man, as the late W. C. Fields was known. And in a rare sober breath, he confided to me that he took his stage name from an empty peach crate which he broke over his father's head upon leaving home at the age of 15.
"It was a moment of poignant misunderstanding," he murmured, "and the trademark on the crate naturally stuck in my mind—'Pick of the Fields. "
I somehow doubted The Great Man's words, particularly since he was born William Claude Dukenfield, which more or less squared with W. C. Fields. But his story did serve to get me interested in just how actors choose their stage names. The results of my studies are clearly shown in the compendium on this page, and I think you'll agree the Rockefeller Foundation should slip me a couple of million to complete the project.
Reason I bring the subject up now is The Orson Bean Story. Mr. Bean (who, incidentally, is pinch-hitting for Jack Paar this coming week) is an old friend of mine because we both grew up in Cambridge, Mass.—about 80 years apart.
We had lunch the other day, and he told me a story about his stage name that must certainly top all stage-name stories.
"My real name is Dallas Burrows," he said, "and I used it when I first broke in as a comic magician about ten years ago.
"I played little night-spots around Boston, and I got nowhere fast. But once I had a week's date at Hurley's Log Cabin and a guy laughed like mad at me—he was the piano-player, Val Duval. Everything I said or did broke him up—for some reason he thought I was the greatest. None of the paying customers even bothered to listen to me.
"Well, I opened my act with: 'Hello, folks, I'm Dallas Burrows, Harvard '48—Yale nothing.' But it never got a laugh.
"Val decided that maybe the name was wrong. Perhaps if I used some thing nutty like Hornsby Shirtwaist, I could get the act off the ground.
"I had nothing to lose, so I tried Hornsby Shirtwaist, but only Val laughed—the customers just drank laughed beer and checked their racing forms.
"Next night Val suggested Roger Duck, but that didn't do any good—except it almost killed Val. He laughed so hard he could hardly play my introductory music.
"Next night he told me to try Orson Bean—I don't know where he got it. So I said: 'Hello, folks, I'm Orson Bean, Harvard '48—Yale nothing.' Val gave a howl and fell right off the piano stool. Every body started to laugh at him, and somehow the atmosphere got jolly. From then on, every thing I did got a laugh. They even clapped at the finish.
"After the act an agent came back and said I wasn't too bad. He said, 'I got a full week's work for you in Montreal.' I got all excited. I said, 'What's the money? He said, 'Seventy-five bucks less ten per cent.' I said, 'Gee, it'll cost me more than that to get there'; and the agent said, 'Well, you got to save up for these jobs.
"But I decided to take it anyway, so he got out the contract forms and asked me how to spell Orson Bean.
" 'I don't know,' I said. He looked sidelong at me, as if I were some kind of a nut, and then wrote the name down the way he figured.
"Well, I did pretty well as Orson Bean, so I never bothered to change it. Funny thing—I married a girl who changed her name too.
"She was Jacqueline de Sibour and took the stage name of Rain Winslow. So now she's Rain Bean."
Orson sipped his coffee thoughtfully. "But it could be worse, you know. If Val had fallen off his stool any other night, I might be Hornsby Shirtwaist—or even Roger Duck!"
"What happened to Val Duval?"
"You probably won't believe it," said Orson, "but I got a letter from him only a few weeks ago, and it's the most poetic irony you ever heard of. Val was actually a Frenchman, but all the managers up in Boston said his name sounded too phony. So he's now playing under the name of Barney O'Day. "

He Won't Rap Game Shows
Orson Bean Has Learned It Pays To Be Idiotic
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD—Orson Bean says he feels like the little kid who is asked what he is going to do when he grows up, and the little kid says right off, "Same thing—play games."
For the past several years Bean has been playing games on TV and got a steady job at at after Don Ameche left his chair on the To Tell the Truth panel at CBS to join the circus (International Showtime) at NBC four years ago. Ameche's circus folds up next month, but Bean will go right on being the Peck's Bad Boy of To Tell the Truth.
"I'm making more money than I deserve with these idiot games which I enjoy playing," says Bean to anyone who asks him if he doesn't believe such a career is beneath his talents.
YEARS AGO, 1954 in fact, he had his own show on CBS, a comedy show called Blue Angel for the New York night club in which Bean first was discovered. It lasted 20 weeks.
After that, CBS did two pilot films for Bean series ("They give up hard"), which didn't sell, then later he did an episode in the June Allyson series titled "The Secret Life of James Thurber." It was supposed to be a "spin-off" pilot for a projected series, but there were no buyers for that one either.
The Bean comedy is sharp, urbane and witty and that would make it suspect along Madison av. where such attributes are not considered salable items on a mass scale.

"REALLY, I'm not that wild to do a series," says Bean. "I have a terrible fear that after burying myself for three years to make all of that money it would be my luck that the Red Chinese decide to attack. Sure, I'd like to live out here and have a pool with Tuesday Weld in it, but what-the-hell."
Not all of Bean's career is strictly fun and games. He flew to Hollywood for one day last week to do a bit part (these are called cameos now) in the Roz Russell picture, "Mother Superior."
Bean plays Mr. Petree, head of a progressive school which gets involved with Mother Superior's St. Francis Academy over a former student.
IT COULD be called typecasting as far as Bean is concerned. Two years ago he founded the Fifteenth St. School for nursery, kindergarten and first-second graders. Bean calls it a non-permissive progressive school, and he patterned it after England's Sumherhill school. His own five-year-old daughter, Michelle, attends.
After the one-day shooting with Miss Russell, he headed for Chicago and two weeks of appearing in "Bye Bye Birdie." Prior to this he had taped a week of radio shows, subbing for Arthur Godfrey.
During his run on Broadway in "Never Too Late" with Paul Ford and Maureen O'Sullivan, Bean frequently had to tape his To Tell the Truth show between the matinee and evening show, then do two after-midnight shows at his old alma mater, the Blue Angel.
MUCH OF his off-TV activity will be reduced, now that the panel on the nighttime version of To Tell the Truth has been pressed into serving on the five daytime Truth shows. Goodson-Todman, the Barnum & Bailey of the quiz-game shows for TV, apparently got worried over the ratings of the daytime series.
"We didn't exactly volunteer for the job," recalls Bean. "Mark Goodson hinted rather strongly that it was necessary if we wanted to keep our chairs on the nighttime show."
Occasionally Bean swings over for a guest appearance on one of the other Goodson-Todson panels. The experience can be unnerving.
"I WAS on the 'What's My Line?' panel, and I had thought all those precious little jokes they bandy about among themselves were done just for the show. But no. Cerf and Dorothy and Arlene act the same way with one another backstage.
"It's all so cute," Bean reports, with the same facial grimace I get any time I inadvertently turn the channel selector to CBS around 10:30 on Sunday nights. I also have a certain amount of trouble swallowing all those God-bless yous which host Bud Collyer passes around so indiscriminate on To Tell the Truth, and I was happy to hear Bean say that he too always figured that a God-bless-you should be a special sort of thing.

Pulchritudinous for Pisces

Ah, for those pre-Code-enforcement days when you could have funny sex gags in a Fleischer cartoon instead of Betty Boop being shoved aside for a dog or an insanely-laughing gadget inventor.

In Old Man of the Mountain (1933), Dave Fleischer and his team come up with assorted gags with animals as Betty tap-strolls up the aforementioned mountain. In one, a puddle provides a home for a fish.



Yes, even fish are attracted to Betty.



Uh, oh, Mr. Fish. Someone back in the puddle sees what you’re doing.



The wife fish drags the husband fish back into the puddle. I like the looks of surprise and sadness on him.



Eventually, Betty strips down to her underwear as the old mountain letch grabs her clothes.

Berny Wolf and Tom Johnson receive the screen credit for animation. They’re saved some work thanks to live action footage of Cab Calloway and his orchestra,